One thing I didn’t expect at all was that some designers would actually start spending their time designing me stuff. Well, I got served pretty good. Not only one, but two designers delivered me a very special gift in the same week.

I mentioned them before but I thought it deserved a post on their own, just to state on how much I felt honored by the gesture. Those lovelies actually spent HOURS of their precious time making this for lil old me? OK girls. You got me. I’m falling on my ass.

Beware, you peepz know I certainly don’t pretend to be anything like a fashionista or fashion blogger. So in a blocky fashion, here is a bit more about those incredible outfits, with pictures of myself modelling them, and stuff.

Codie’s Gown - From Nuclear Boutique

Sasy Scarborough introduced me to Arikinui Adria (AKA Ari), and in the first instant I talked to this adorable woman, I was charmed. It didn’t take long before I invited her to Boudoir Rouge, because her name means sophistication and beauty and sexy.

One night she totally blew my mind when I saw that item drop into my inventory. I saw the name and I was like, no fucking way! And I put it on and it was perfection.

I have a HARD time finding fitting system skirts, mainly because some designers don’t check their skirts on larger avatars, and they put the texture topping too low. Result is I end up with a ring of emptiness around the waist. Not with this one, it is a perfect fit.

Fluffy prims are attached on shins, making it hugging the legs pretty nicely. Very elegant soirée gown, probably one of the best I own. Honnest! Tho I admit there may be a bit of favoritism, I let you be the judges.

Codie’s Gown is available through this SLURL. Check Nuclear Boutique’s Blog for more info.

Codie Corset - Bluebell Fasions

How an amazing gift Roxette Wise made me for the Boudoir Rouge launch party. This 4 variation set of lingerie with corset is nothing short of amazing. I sure own a few lingerie sets, and this is one of the good ones. And well, the color scheme is so me

Roxette posted about it on Bluebell Fashion’s blog.

Available on OnRez, SLX or inworld.

Also, I would like to mention that Dinee Ghia made me an adorable necklace using my logo. Picture of it follows. It’s lovely sweetheart, TY so so much, big smoochies!

Like if that was not enough, I heard some other things were on preparation for me. Will keep you posted as it comes. You people always amaze me. Much love.

One of the most panicking idea about the new Linden Labs guidelines is that thousands of bloggers may now have to remove infringing contents from their blog. But if you own a Wordpress self-hosted blog (maybe even a Wordpress.Com blog), NO NOT PANIC! Ubernyms is a very slick way of mass rewriting your blog without sweat.

Legal things better left to lawyers as far as I’m concerned, this article is NOT about HOW to make your blog compliant to the new policy. IANAL and I have no idea yet of all the legal implications. This article will focus on the technical aspect of installing Ubernyms and not on the legal aspects. For that you will have to read Linden Lab’s policies throughly, personally I don’t even know how it will affect bloggers. LL ain’t very good at communicating important decisions like that anyways, but that is another subject completely.

NOTE: Ubernyms may not be compatible with all Wordpress plugins. I heard it conflicted with other plugins. I CANNOT offer support for any aspect of it, as I do not develop Ubernyms. Consider this a primer to the matter, no more.

STEP 1 : Installing Ubernyms

This is the most tricky part, since the installation can be different on one host or another. So I cannot explain all of it, but will try to give it a shot.

Basically installation consists of:

1. Download Ubernyms for the right version of Wordpress
2. Put that .ZIP file into your /wp-content/plugins directory and unzip it on the server OR unzip the file locally and put the folder and all of it’s content in the /wp-content/plugins/ directory through FTP
3. Activate the plugin in your Plugins section of your Wordpress blog administration panel
4. INSTALL SignpostMarv Ubernym patch that fixes a bug with the HTML characters and UTF-8/accented characters. Go there and download the ubernyms-2.7.php.txt file and rename it to ubernyms.php. Then upload it via FTP in the Ubernyms plugin directory, and overwrite the old one.

STEP 2 : Configuring Ubernyms

Once installed, Ubernyms is delicious cake. And you must eat it.

1. Go into the Plugins section, and click on Ubernyms Configuration
2. Leave the upper configuration as is, it is usually defaulting a decent configuration
3. What is of utter interest for this case is the Replace Text option. Take a free slot under “Add new acronyms” and select Replace Text.
4. Enter a term in the Text field, and the replacement term in Definition

For example, let’s say that you want to replace the acronym “SL” for “SL ™”, you would have to put “SL” in the Text field and “SL ™” in the Description field (you should use the HTML code for the trademark sign in this case). SignpostMarv issued a patch fixing a problem with this, thanks to him for the leet patchage!

This plugin can replace any expression in your entire blog in a second, not only for replacements, you can link to internal or external URLs, replace acronyms by full length expressions, and so on. It’s the blogger’s best friend, you can take my word on that.

Hope this will calm down some lovely people I know that got very stressed up with their blog infringing on Linden Labs trademarks, thinking it would be required to correct every article posted by hand. This plugin removes much of the job. It still needs to be proven if it is really necessary. <3

How cute is that. How never dreamed of riding a bubble? Well this is the perfect occasion as Jacek Antonelli AKA Cuddlefish launches her new product, the Bubble Ride, a clear bubble vehicle launcher. You herd right! One touch on the bubble launcher and it pops you a new bubble, you click on the bubble and you ride it! You pretty much go with the wind but the bubble has controls that allows you to change direction and go upwards/downwards. Of course it doesn’t turn on a dime but hey! It’s awesome and it’s beautiful and not possible in real life. And it’s awesome fun.

Click here for more information on the event, straight from Cuddlefish Junction webpage.

Furthermore, as of sheer vanity, just check who’s on this Cuddlefish Junction poster, floating delightfully. I is purring in delight. ^^

(image borrowed shamelessly from Cuddlefish Junction website but I’m sure Momma Cuddlefish will forgive me (gropes! gropes!)

Someone on Twitter suggested the PicLens Firefox extension. I just had to share this one because I think it’s an awesome gadget.

PicLens is an ordinary Firefox extension that allows immersive browsing of pictures posted on Flickr and of some other image search and hosting services.

Quoted from the PicLens website:

“PicLens instantly transforms your browser into a full-screen, 3D experience for viewing images on the web. Photos will come to life via a cinematic presentation that goes well beyond the confines of the traditional browser window. With PicLens, browsing and viewing images on the web will never be the same again.”

Indeed. Browsing images now feels natural, and it goes much faster than standard viewing when browsing batches of images. I’m quite addicted to it so you may just want to try it, just in case you like it too.

• Be warned, I tested this on a recent and powerful machine, not on older hardware.
• It’s avaliable for Explorer and even a reduced functionnality Safari version
• You can search for images directly
• “Fly through 1000s of images in a split second”

PicLens Website:

http://www.piclens.com/site/firefox/win/ 

I’m a photographer. And I’m a scripter. It’s pretty much all I do in SL when I’m not making sweet love to hordes of cute girls. Joke apart, there’s one thing I don’t want to interfere with my artistic creativity, and it’s a freaking photo rig.

For a year now, I tried about every system I could get my hand on. Basically, be it photosphere, or photobooth, they all pretty do the same lame thing. If I need a backdrop, I will edit a damn prim and stick a texture on it. I know I’m dumb sometimes, but I can do that. And I see no point in anyone of you buying a photography system to do that. It’s very lame, and it’s a loss of money and time, because it is actually quicker to do it by editing. They are just very expensive pose stands. Really, they are. So I just stopped caring.

For a good while now, all my pictures are taken with my sticks and stones rig. Pretty much a black background, a prim for eye gazing, and a bunch of light prims that I rez and manipulate by editing them directly. To date, I never found any system that was of any use in making my life more easy for anything.

Well recently I met Poid Malkovich (a sweetheart) that introduced me to Anna Tretiak (another sweetheart). Anna, along with her partner Serenity Mercier, are Ananke Media Systems, maker of the spiffy new PhotoStage system. Anna gave me a PhotoStage system for testing, which I gladly did.

Here is the first picture I shot with PhotoStage:

Apart a few minor annoyances, PhotoStage is extremely powerful. It’s strongest point, IMOHO, is the ability to rez and manipulate gaze points, lights, and also special effect generators, straight into the scene, and manipulate them with ease through a HUD. It also allows you to record the actual positions of things to be recalled later on demand. The HUD is incredibly well done and offers very advanced options and fine tuning for about everything.

The baddest point I can think of is that once hidden, the posestand cannot be unhidden by voice commands. Anna agreed and told me she was implementing a voice command system to go with the HUD. Which should fix the problem.

I must admit this is the first time I actually use a photography system that does NOT imply more manipulation than what I usually do with the edit tools. This was a very strong point for me, as the learning curve was quickly absorbed. It’s not perfect yet but I would say it has more good features than bad points, and actually makes me want to use it.

I won’t comment furthermore, I will just let you enjoy this little video that should give you a damn good idea of how it looks and feel.

CLICK HERE FOR THE VIDEO DEMO

Kudos, Anna and Serenity, you girls rawk! People, I encourage you to go and grab a PhotoStage now, it’s the best studio system I had a chance to try until now.

You can also visit Ananke Media System’s blog here.